


High Treason

by greygerbil



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 05:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14687940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Young duke JJ has reason to believe that someone is trying to kill him and worse, his siblings are caught in the attempts on his life. When his parents refuse to believe his suspicions, he turns to King Victor's court mage Georgi, who has come to heal JJ's ailing little sister, to help him find evidence.





	High Treason

**Author's Note:**

> Written for YoI Royalty Week, Day 5: Intrigue and Scandal: An affair is exposed, politicians and courtiers vie for favour. This world exists in a gilded cage — can we survive it?

“How is she doing?”

JJ peered over Georgi’s shoulder at the pale little face on the pillow. He tried to sound confident, but felt like someone had pulled his guts into knots. King Victor’s court mage had been sitting by his youngest sister’s bedside all day, uncorking potions, crushing leaves and flowers between his fingers, mumbling incantations. Though JJ had tried to be reasonable like his parents, keep up the daily work and not distract the man called to help, he found himself lingering in the doorway at every opportunity he got and now couldn’t help but come closer to watch Veronqiue’s chest still rising and falling under the blankets, an obvious sign of life JJ set all his hopes on.

“As I told you, she should be fine,” Georgi said.

The gentle rebuke in the tone reminded JJ that this was not the first time he had asked today. Possibly not the first time he had asked this hour.

“I apologise,” he said, trying to pull himself together. Even in the face of tragedy, he was a duke. He couldn’t let it get to him.

Georgi shook his head.

“Your parents have been here, too, as have your other siblings. I don’t think we’ve been alone all day. I understand, though.”

JJ tried for the smile that made the world think he was unbeatable and sat by Georgi’s side on Veronique’s bed. She had stopped sweating and whimpering and now seemed contently asleep, at least.

“Do you have family?” JJ asked, to distract himself from the wave of misery that overcame him as he considered at her scrawny little form.

“No,” Georgi said, straightening the blanket that covered JJ’s sister after checking her pulse at her neck. “But I had, so I understand.”

“Oh,” JJ made.

It was not the answer a good duke should have given, nor even just a decent man who was watching someone keep his sister alive. On the tourney grounds and the battlefield, JJ was handily beating knights with decades more experience than him, and in front of a sea of faces, speaking was always easy. However, one on one, the proper words sometimes just didn’t want to come.

“Can you give me the satchel from the table?” Georgi asked, eventually, and JJ winced as he realised he had missed his window to say anything at all. Quickly, he got up and grabbed the small leather bag, which Georgi took from him and pushed under Veronique’s pillow.

“What’s in there?” JJ asked.

“A bit of everything. It’s a charm. She should wear it for a week after she wakes up.”

“I’ll make sure she does,” JJ said with conviction.

That assertion made him feel at least a little useful, but as Georgi turned back to Veronique with a nod, JJ realised there was really nothing much for him to do here.

“I should go tend to my duties,” he said, after a long moment of looking at his little sister, still hesitant.

“If anything should happen to her, I will call for you, Lord Jean,” Georgi said.

JJ was happy he hadn’t had to ask him. However, just as he touched the doorknob, Georgi raised his voice again.

“Would you come talk to me when you are done with your tasks for the day?”

“Of course,” JJ said, trying to keep the surprise from showing on his face. “Is it about Veronique?”

“Yes – in away.”

Immediately, all manner of terrible news that Georgi could relay filled JJ’s head. Maybe Veronique would lose the use of some of her limbs, or she would be struck mute or remain with a child’s mind forever. Sickness like this could do terrible things to the body.

“Should I bring my parents? My older siblings?”

Georgi thought about this for a moment.

“I’d prefer to speak in private for now,” he said.

-

“Is your family in trouble?”

Georgi turned a silver ring with a black stone on his finger and JJ found himself suddenly focusing on the movement instead of his face. If he looked him straight in the eyes, perhaps Georgi would see too much.

“Why do you ask? Is anything at the court not to your liking? I happen to think we’re doing well! The king hasn’t made any complaints of our contribution to the war effort – isn’t it still the biggest of any duchy in the kingdom? We haven’t had to ask for a loan from the crown in generations, either, and I know many noble houses who can’t boast of that.”

JJ forced a grin as he rattled off the achievements of his family, but Georgi just looked impatient.

“I think your sister was poisoned.”

The smile fell off JJ’s face as his blood ran cold. He swallowed and looked out the window into the courtyard, where a servant was leading the horses into the stable for the night. He shouldn’t talk about this to Georgi, he knew. They had a brilliant reputation and JJ had no intentions of besmirching it. Healer that he might be, Georgi was also a lord and a close confidant to King Victor. Anything he might tell him could definitely find its way back to the king’s ears. Why would Georgi be more loyal to him than Victor, after all?

But he had felt so, so lonely with the burden he had shouldered lately. More than once he had asked his parents to at least consider his warnings, when one thing after the other went wrong at their court, and they just wouldn’t. JJ liked to think of himself as strong enough to handle that – he’d fight anyone who said differently.

But what good was his pride was if his siblings died for it?

In a snap decision, he took Georgi by the elbow and pulled him away from Veronique’s bed. Though she was sleeping, he could not risk anyone eavesdropping on them. Georgi made a short noise of surprise but let himself be dragged into a back corner of the room.

“I think so,” JJ said quietly, voice tight with the effort it took for him not to spill every concern he had had right there to the first person who seemed willing to lend a sympathetic ear. “My parents don’t want King Victor to think we don’t have control over our court. This is the largest duchy of his realm, after all. And we know what we’re doing – we beat back the giants to the Winterhills and there hasn’t been a dragon attack in months... !” JJ took a deep breath. No, this was not what he was here to talk about. Gods be damned, he was just defending himself. With a look at Veronique, he steeled himself. “Things haven’t been right here in the castle,” he admitted.

“What happened?”

“A month ago, my brother Leon asked to ride my mare when we went hunting and she went wild and threw him off. She died a few days later. They said she’d gotten an infection. I didn’t give it much thought. Then me and my sister Brigitte were walking along the courtyard when a stone broke off the ramparts. It missed us just narrowly. I almost drowned when I was swimming in the lake behind the castle because a baby kraken grabbed me by the ankle – there have never been any monsters in there before. And Veronique stole my plate at supper the night she fell ill...”

Georgi furrowed his brow, hand raised to his mouth in concern.

“They might all be coincidences – maybe the food really was bad like my mother said,” JJ said. “But...”

“I know what you mean. There are a few spells that might help me figure out what is in your sister’s blood,” Georgi answered.

“Really?”

“Then we would know for sure if someone is trying to kill you,” Georgi said and JJ felt a shiver creep up his spine.

-

“My parents won’t listen.”

Since Veronique had woken up that morning, Georgi had moved into his own chambers, where JJ found him sitting over a book, which he shut as JJ entered. He slammed the door behind himself and let out a long breath.

“They don’t believe she was poisoned?” Georgi asked, pushing his chin up. “I’m not so bad at alchemy that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between poison and meat that has gone bad!”

“I think they don’t want to.” JJ sat down on the edge of Georgi’s desk, his arms crossed over his chest. “Because I have an idea who it is, and if they admitted that those weren’t accidents, they’d have to consider I’m right!”

“You already know who it could be?” Georgi asked, astonished.

JJ worried his lower lip with his teeth for a moment before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to that. It did not look lordly at all.

“Lord Gazave,” he said. “He is an old friend of my father’s. I think they had the same wet-nurse. But he never took a liking to me and ever since Lady Isabella and me broke off the engagement he arranged, he has been very cold to me. I know he thinks my next-oldest brother Theodore would make a better head of the family than me, too. My parents love me, but – they don’t believe a word against Gazave.”

“That is terrible,” Georgi said, looking deeply affected.

“Well – I can handle him!” JJ said, automatically, and tried for a grin that came out somehow lopsided. “I just, er, don’t know how to yet.”

And to consider that a sword was hanging over his neck, one which would madly strike out at his loved ones, too, made JJ feel ill. No, he couldn’t be afraid. He had to find a solution instead.

“Is there any way you could prove this to your parents? Or perhaps to the king? If I bring him evidence, he will go over their heads if necessary.”

JJ was well aware how bad that might look for his family, but the memory of Veronique’s ashen grey face as she collapsed in the dining hall was stronger than his distaste for humiliation. If involving King Victor was what it took, he would do it. That was the kind of hard decisions dukes had to make sometimes, and he planned to lead his house one day.

“Yes. Perhaps if I could get into his room?” Not that JJ knew what he expected to find, but it seemed like a good place to start looking. “It’s locked, though, of course. He’s always been a private man. I could maybe kick the door down, but that won’t stay undetected for long...”

“If it’s just a normal lock, I may be able to help,” Georgi said archly, and JJ had a feeling he was pausing for effect. “The spell to mould a piece of metal into a fitting key is actually rather simple.”

“Is it?”

“If you have magic talent, of course.”

“Well, great! We’ll do that!”

Georgi looked pleased with JJ’s excitement, and JJ didn’t care if he wasn’t acting as proper as he should have. This was great news! He could finally take the first damn step in the right direction after months of spinning his wheels.

“I don’t know if he is out tonight, but my parents meet him for private advice every Friday morning. We can get into his room then.”

“You have to find me a piece of metal,” Georgi reminded him.

“That’s the least of our problems. I’ll just go to our smith.”

JJ smiled at Georgi. It felt like a little bit of the weight that had been on his heart for the last weeks was lifted. He was a lucky bastard to have been sent this man, for another might have done nothing more than write back to the king about the fact that the Leroys didn’t seem to be able to control their retainers and left the matter alone otherwise.

“I am in your debt,” JJ said. It was almost a surprise – he’d never had to say those words before and mean them.

“No, I’m a knight of the realm, too, even if I don’t wear armour,” Georgi said, giving a forceful nod. “It’s my duty to protect Victor’s subjects – like you and your siblings.”

Why had he never really talked to Georgi before when had visited Victor’s court? He had seen him often enough. Probably, JJ admitted to himself, because he was not much of a knight in the traditional sense. JJ liked hanging out with people who knew how to swing a sword and who measured up on the same field as him, and while Georgi had been trained like all noblemen and had even fought in a few battles, he had never made as much of a name for himself as other knights, first and foremost of course King Victor himself, who JJ still wanted to unhorse in a tourney one of those days.

All the prowess in the world couldn’t have saved Veronique, though.

JJ hesitated for a moment.

“What happened to your family?” he asked.

Georgi looked slightly taken aback.

“What?”

“I… just want to know.”

After all, Georgi was going out of his way to help his family. Looking at the expression Georgi’s face, he wondered if he should even have brought it up again, but the only way was forward now, so it was too late.

“They were assassinated by the faction around Victor’s uncle when he planned his coup back in the day,” Georgi said, carefully.

“Why?”

“No reason really to do with them,” Georgi said, turning to play with the cover of his book. It was _The Snow Prince_ , a popular romance that several of JJ’s sisters liked a lot. “It was supposed to be a blow against Victor. They wanted to thin out and frighten the people supporting him. Since he ascended to the throne so young, they thought it would be easy to topple him if his followers folded. I was visiting at the royal court the night when the assassins broke into my ancestors’ home and killed my family in their beds.” He stared at the book in silence for a moment before he looked up. “That was fifteen years ago, though. Why do you ask?”

JJ imagined what it would be like – not only the thought to lose family, the potential pain of which he had felt like knives since Veronique had fallen ill –, but for it to have been an essentially meaningless act meant to hurt someone completely different. JJ thought he would have gone mad with rage.

“I know Victor took his rebel uncle down, so I can’t help with that,” he said, straightening to stand before Georgi. “If you ever need a knight from now on, though, you can always call on me. Lord JJ is going to be there! I’ll make sure nothing like that happens to you again.”

It was quite the line to bring considering he couldn’t even figure out how to protect his own family at the moment, but JJ still meant it. Georgi had already earned his respect and protection tenfold just by what he had done for Veronique.

Georgi looked at him for a moment before he smiled.

“You’re very chivalrous.”

“Of course. That’s how House Leroy is! And with you help, I can cut out this darkness in our middle and bring our focus back to where it needs to be.”

-

“Is it working?”

Georgi nodded his head, face tight with concentration. JJ was fascinated for a moment by his long fingers holding on to the metal, which moved like a small, silver snake, but tore himself from the sight to keep a view on the hallway. It ended in a gloomy dead end on one side, but stretched silent in the other direction towards the main halls of the castle. A draft blew down from there that made the tapestries adorned with the Leroy maple leaf sigil throw flickering shadows on the walls. JJ’s nerves were pulled tight as bowstrings. Sneaking around the place was not his style. He liked to be at the spearhead of every troop and in the first line of defence, not among the scouts and assassins.

Behind him, the door clicked softly.

“It’s done,” Georgi whispered.

JJ’s heart beat like a running rabbit’s as they pushed the door open and quickly closed it behind themselves. The room that stretched before them looked inconspicuous enough – an orderly desk, a few chairs for guests to sit around a table, a shelf full of books from the printing presses interspersed with expensive leather-bound volumes that were probably transcribed by hand. A door in the corner lead to the bedchambers. Portraits of Gazave’s ancestors lined the walls.

“I will look in the back,” Georgi said.

JJ nodded his head. The desk was probably his best chance. He began digging through Gazave’s paperwork and tried to ignore that his fingers were shaking. Was he afraid of being found out or of not finding anything?

There were masses of notes on the high council meetings and letters to other members of the court. JJ scanned them quickly and found not a hint of anything interesting or dangerous. Should he just take them all to look more closely later? No, he’d be found out immediately. Besides, the man was really too smart to put his crimes into writing to someone else and then stuff that in his desk. What was he thinking? He had to look in the books or under the pillows. Frustrated with himself for wasting time, JJ shoved the papers back into the drawer in which he had found them, but they wouldn’t go flat, rising up in the back instead.

He reached underneath and pulled out a letter addressed _To Javert_ in a flowing script – Gazave’s first name – and, under the broken seal in the back, another scrawl, _from Madeleine_. Peering inside, he saw a bunch of intensely purple and slightly crumpled flowers pressed against a letter. He held the letter open with two fingers and caught a few lines of flowery expressions of affection.

“I have nothing so far. Did you find anything, Lord Jean?” Georgi asked, stepping up to his side.

“Just a love letter,” JJ said, with slight distaste. That a man who had almost been responsible for killing his sister could even think about such things... how could a monster like that love at all? “Here, he got flowers.”

He was about to reach inside to pull out the evidence when Georgi grabbed his wrist.

“Wait, that’s monkshood, don’t! It can poison you at a touch.”

They stared at each other over the envelope as Georgi’s words sank in. JJ felt his lips pull into a triumphant grin.

“Got him,” he said, carefully closing the envelope and pushing it under his doublet. “You bring this to the king and with your testimony, he can have Gazave arrested for high treason.”

Eagerly, Georgi nodded his head. “Let’s leave.”

Georgi had just locked the door behind them once more when JJ heard footsteps from the far end of the hall, and Gazave’s sonorous voice followed by the laughter of a young man. He froze. How would they explain what they were doing here? The hallway led nowhere but to Gazave’s room and into an empty corner.

Actually, there was _one_ thing JJ had seen people do in unlit dead ends of the castle like this, usually servants and guards who thought themselves without witnesses. He grabbed Georgi, who was staring down the hallway in alarm, and tore him three steps to the right, where he pushed him against the wall, his head bracketed by JJ’s arms. JJ stared at his wide blue eyes for a moment before he leaned forward and mashed their mouths together.

It was more of a collision than a kiss, not that JJ would know much about that, anyway. The only person he had ever kissed was Isabella, and only a few times when they had been allowed to be on their own on her visits. Georgi stood stiff for a moment before he seemed to understand what was happening. Then his hands took hold of JJ’s body, pulling him in until they stood chest to chest, thigh to thigh. That probably did look more like an illicit meeting than JJ’s awkward hovering, he had to admit, but now he could feel Georgi’s solid warmth so close and perhaps it was because his heart had already been racing, but it stumbled as one hand went up into his hair and the other rested on the back of his neck. Georgi angled his head and what had mostly been an awkward press of their lips turned into an actual kiss that sent a flurry of sparks through JJ’s body.

The conversation at the end of the hall came to an abrupt end. A woman gave an awkward chuckle. From the corner of his eyes, JJ saw that Gazave had two servants with him. The three of them turned hastily away now to give the young duke and his lover some privacy.

When the steps were only distant echoes, JJ dared to part from Georgi, slowly releasing him from where he had trapped him against the tapestry.

“I... I couldn’t think of anything else,” he stammered.

“No, it worked,” Georgi assured, obviously straining to sound calm as he quickly straightened his robes.

There was colour in his cheeks. JJ could still _taste_ him.

“We should go,” Georgi reminded him, and JJ wondered briefly if still knew how to use his legs.

-

The sun had long set when JJ made the decision to head for Georgi’s chambers. He had tossed and turned in his bed for half an hour, thinking about the envelope he had entrusted to him with all his hopes for his family, the way Georgi had looked at him when JJ told him he’d keep him safe, how his hands had felt as he had urged JJ closer, all those impressions jumbled up into something he didn’t quite understand. JJ hadn’t even thanked him properly yet, either, and though he had no idea what words would actually come out of his mouth when he would meet him now, JJ knew it’d feel wrong if the last time he talked to him was tomorrow when Georgi would depart for King Victor’s Winter Court and they would be among dozens of people, not allowed to speak freely.

As JJ turned the corner to the hallway in which the guest chambers lay, he saw that Georgi’s door was an inch open, a diffuse light spilling out into the dark. Good, he was still awake. JJ pushed at the door.

Georgi was not awake. A torch on the far wall cast dim light on him lying on the bed in just soft linen breeches, his head angled backwards over a bunched-up pillow, his pale white throat presented to the man who stood hunched over him with a dagger in hand.

JJ shot forward with a wordless yell, arms wrapping around the man’s upper body, forcing the attacker’s elbows against his side to keep his hands off Georgi. His head whipped around, and JJ saw Gazave’s face for a moment before he wrenched around in JJ’s arms and knocked his forehead against his nose, making him stumble backwards. It was only years of instinct that allowed JJ to evade the dagger that came for him next. He was just thinking how best to disarm him when Gazave’s head flew to the side as an iron candelabrum smashed into his cheek with a dull thud. He stumbled and fell, unmoving but for his shallow breath.

“Are you alright?” Georgi asked, lowering the candelabrum.

JJ tasted the blood that ran over his lips and briefly touched his nose. It felt tender, but not broken. He nodded his head. Shock muted the pain for now.

“That’s Gazave, isn’t it?” There was a tremble in Georgi’s voice. He turned back to JJ, the fierce determination on his face replaced by fear. “You really did make good on your promise to protect me…”

“Well – that’s how Lord JJ does it!” JJ said, trying for a grin. He imagined his teeth would be pink with blood. Georgi touched his arm and took a deep breath and JJ took his wrist, happy to hold on. Half a minute, maybe fifteen seconds later, and Georgi would have been dead.

“Did he know you were in his room?” JJ asked.

Georgi gently wound out of his grip to lean down to a leather bag at the foot of the bed.

“The letter is still here,” he said. “And it doesn’t look like he was trying to find anything. All my things are where I remember putting them.”

As JJ looked around the room, his gaze caught on the dagger that had fallen during the commotion. With a start he recognised the engraving on the pommel.

“This is mine,” he said, picking it up and turning it to show the two golden, entwined Js to Georgi. “My grandfather gave this to me when he first took me hunting. What the hell?”

Georgi looked between the dagger and Gazave.

“If he can’t kill you, he’ll discredit you before the king by making people think you killed me?”

“Why would anyone think I had done that?! You saved my sister’s life!”

Georgi frowned at the dagger until understanding dawned suddenly on his face. He took a sharp breath.

“We might have given him the idea. There were two servants with him when you kissed me this morning, remember? They could have attested to the fact that we had an affair. He may have spun a story that you wanted to silence me for whatever reason. You wouldn’t have been the first unhappy lover in history to reach for a weapon!”

JJ could feel the blood drain from his face.

“I put you in danger, didn’t I?” he said quietly. Why had he not thought of that? What a fool he was.

Georgi shook his head.

“I put myself in danger going after him. And it turned out fine.... thanks to Lord JJ,” Georgi said with a small smile.

JJ pulled him in again by the arm, laughing against his will, and pressed the dagger into Georgi’s hand.

“Watch him for me for a moment. I will get the guards.”

-

“How is your father taking it?”

Georgi tugged gently at his horse’s reins to make it stand still. Despite the fact that JJ had seen him off in the main hall, he had noticed, glancing out a window, that Georgi was waiting in the courtyard for the drawbridge to be lowered and took the chance to say his farewell properly.

“Still not well, but after what he saw last night and the letter with the monkshood... he believes us. We’re going to take care of Gazave. If the king asks, tell him House Leroy has it all under control!” JJ said, proudly straightening before him.

With a soft smile, Georgi nodded and then pulled himself up into the saddle.

“I will have only good to tell of you,” he said.

They looked at each other for a moment as Georgi’s horse danced on the spot.

“Perhaps I can visit you sometime? I should show my face at court, anyway, after King Victor sent me help like you.”

It was only a ride of three hours, too. JJ had always found it a bit troublesome, but suddenly three hours didn’t seem all that long in the grand scheme of things.

“There’s a tourney for summer solstice in a fortnight,” Georgi said, just a little too eager to seem unaffected by the thought of JJ’s return. JJ felt a strange warmth in his chest.

“Are you going to ride?”

“No, but I will be watching.”

“Then I’ll be there if you promise to keep a flower for me! It would be boring to ride without someone’s favour.”

Georgi blushed.

“A lot of people favour you, as you well know. But I’ll pick out a special flower for you, Lord Jean.”

“Not a poisonous one, right? Even though I was trouble.”

Laughing, Georgi turned towards the drawbridge which now crossed the moat that surrounded the castle.

“I promise.”


End file.
